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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26981434">Guide us waking</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero'>another_Hero</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Schitt's Creek</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Christianity, Gen, Jukebox Prompt, Post-Barbecue, and also post-olive branch, compline, just a lil short thing, praying, queer christianity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:17:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26981434</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Twyla wrapped an arm around his shoulders and walked him home. “You know,” she murmured, “some monks and nuns, after they say compline, they don’t talk again until the next morning.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Guide us waking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiffymittens/gifts">spiffymittens</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>thanks to NeelyO for beta reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sometimes he felt it missing from his body, a feeling a lot like when he went too long without practicing the guitar and began to sense its absence half guilty half longing in his hands. Patrick hadn’t been to church since he’d left West Canthor, but not on purpose. There was a Lutheran congregation in Elmdale with a big rainbow flag on the building, which he’d registered abstractly before he’d been able to think of it for himself: if he ever did get around to finding a church, of course he’d want to go somewhere inclusive. But the disruption in routine had made it easy to devote his Sunday mornings to hikes, then to Hikes, then to opening up the store. He thought about it some weeknights, not stressed—it wasn’t as though God didn’t know he was gay, and Patrick hadn’t been raised in a smiting kind of tradition—but the way he missed getting to see his cousin Angie’s new baby, sincere but secondary.</p><p>It was enough to get him to do a bit of research. He could have gone all the way to Elm Valley for Evensong with some welcoming Anglicans on Saturday nights, but usually, routinely, he spent Saturday nights with David. He could have gone out to Elm Grove for 6am centering prayer with, he suspected, mostly retirees at a Methodist church with no explicit inclusion statement, but it wasn’t hard not to do that. Every time the Lutherans prayed together, he was working. It was fine. Most of the time, this absence didn’t itch him at all, and he just went about his day.</p><p>He wasn’t even thinking about it, actually, two days after Rachel had come to town and left again, when Ronnie approached him in the café. Her look was appraising, and then she said, “Come to my house tonight at nine.”</p><p>He was pretty sure Ronnie didn’t like him, and also, what the fuck. “Um,” he said eloquently.</p><p>“It’s queer compline tonight. We do it every Thursday. Looks like you could use it.”</p><p>“Um,” he said again, because trying to fix on a thought these last couple days was like trying to hit a puck in a goal on a rink coated in honey, and also because that wasn’t a word he knew. “Queer what?”</p><p>“Church,” she said. “At night. You know which house is mine?”</p><p>“Yeah.” He supposed there had always been queer church, and he had just never been told about it. Hadn’t been someone to tell, and now he was.</p><p>“I’m on David’s side,” she added, just to clarify.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Patrick hoarsely. “So am I.”</p><p>Her eyes narrowed. “But you look pretty shit,” she said. “Nine o’clock.”</p><p>He didn’t plan to go to Ronnie’s house at nine o’clock, and even when he left his house, he wasn’t sure he’d go in until he did. She didn’t look surprised, though. It was Ronnie, a nervous teen who didn’t look at anybody <em>but</em> Ronnie, Twyla, a tall skinny white woman with a pointed face, Jake who sold things in the store and also kissed David whenever he saw him, somebody older and Asian and definitely trans but Patrick couldn’t have said exactly how. He nodded at them all, collectively, glancing around at them on the cozy lamplit sofas. Ronnie handed him an open book with <em>An Order for Compline</em> across the top of the page, so that must have been how you spelled it. “This is everyone,” she said. “Who’s going to lead tonight?”</p><p>“I will,” said Twyla, and after a pause, she looked down at her phone and read out, “The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end.”</p><p>Patrick wasn’t sure he deserved a peaceful night, wasn’t even sure he wanted one just yet, but everyone else, yeah, they should have that. So he said <em>Amen</em> along with the rest of them. He was too fervent in the shared confession of sin, but also kind of glad to get that off his chest right off the bat, that <em>through our own fault</em>. The prescribed language, everyone else speaking around him, they kept him from turning confession into an endless self-castigation. They read part of Psalm 4 together, and when they said, “You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine and oil increase,” Patrick felt his throat get tight, but probably no one else could hear it in the mix of all their voices.</p><p>For the first time since he’d waved goodbye to Rachel, Patrick didn’t have a hard time listening, focusing; Twyla’s voice was clear and calm and sure. When she closed them out with a quiet, “The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless us and keep us,” he said a clear <em>Amen</em>. They all sat there in the lamplight for a few moments, before Jake stood up, the first of all of them, and raised one hand in a not-quite wave.</p><p>Patrick nodded to Ronnie when he handed back her book; he wasn’t quite ready to speak again yet. “Every Thursday,” she said, and he nodded again. He should thank her. He hoped she got it.</p><p>Twyla wrapped an arm around his shoulders and walked him home. “You know,” she murmured, “some monks and nuns, after they say compline, they don’t talk again until the next morning.” He ought to thank her too.</p><p> </p><p>He had a hell of a week, but the Thursday after, Patrick was breathing a lot easier. He’d spent the last two nights with David; they’d talked, and they’d cried, and they’d hardly stopped touching. “I should probably have dinner with my family tonight,” David said when the shelves were replenished, the register closed out, the floor swept. “But if you want to—watch a movie after?” He danced his fingers over Patrick’s shoulders on <em>watch a movie</em>, but it was impossible to tell whether that meant it was a euphemism for have sex or that the movie would star Drew Barrymore, and no arguments.</p><p><em>Yes</em>, he almost said automatically, because he wanted to do that. But—”I actually maybe have plans at nine.”</p><p>“Maybe?”</p><p>“I mean,” he said, “I don’t have to go.”</p><p>David set his hands on Patrick’s shoulders. “You don’t have to skip your plans,” he said. “I’ll still be here tomorrow.”</p><p>Patrick didn’t want to admit to worrying about that. “You can come if you want.”</p><p>“Is it that church thing Ronnie does?”</p><p>Patrick felt sheepish, sort of, admitting to wanting it at all, much less wanting it badly enough to ask for a rain check with David. “Yeah,” he murmured, looking away.</p><p>David nodded, kissed him, just a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. Not—it wasn’t <em>bad</em>, Patrick didn’t think. Tomorrow. It was kind of a relief, even; he’d get his feet under him a little more instead of having to share all this right away, before he knew how to live in it. He kissed David again.</p><p>“Go to dinner,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”</p><p>At queer compline, Ronnie didn’t ask for a volunteer officiant; she said she was going to do it herself. “The Lord Almighty grant us a peaceful night and a perfect end,” she read. <em>Amen</em>, they responded together. “Our help is in the name of the Lord,” Ronnie continued. Just as it had always been, her voice was lower than Twyla’s, older. But here, now, it was another way queer church could sound. The woman with the pointy nose didn’t have any book or papers or phone in front of her to follow along; she just knew. Her <em>The maker of heaven and earth</em> was confident and clear. When they said anything about the Father, she said <em>Creator</em>, right in line with the rest of them. There was a woman who hadn’t been here last week, whose voice was deeper than any of theirs, and she made all their answers sound like music. And when the time came for a hymn, which last week they had skipped over, she broke into a song Patrick hadn’t heard before. It was short and repeated and simple, <em>I am sure I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living</em>. The others joined her, Twyla and Ronnie with harmonies, and Patrick got there too, after listening to it a couple times through.</p><p>“Thanks, Ronnie,” Patrick said when he gave her the book back at the end of the—he supposed you called it a service, just like any other one. She gave him a slow nod in response.</p><p>He didn’t check his phone on the way home. Everyone would be fine until morning. Now it was too nighttime, too quiet, all their voices and all their queerness and all their hope echoing within the rich full silent feeling he thought was God. Next week he would get there a few minutes early. He had to learn their names.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://www.bcponline.org/DailyOffice/compline.html">the text of the compline service they're using</a>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://complinepodcast.org/">have some sung compline as a podcast as well why not</a>
</p><p>
  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly45q8EgN8">the taize song</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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